Why the Long Face? I Watch “BoJack Horseman”

Why the Long Face? I Watch “BoJack Horseman” October 10, 2015

for AmCon. This piece could have been twice the length–I have a lot of feelings about this show, apparently:

We’ve suffered a rash of cynical, sarcastic, hyper-competent white manchildren on our TV screens: “House” was one of the purest versions of this creepy fantasy, where self- and other-loathing make you cool and insightful. Recently there has been a bit of a backlash. Leading men (Walter White, Don Draper) now display the gross and pathetic nature of entitled narcissism, no matter how well the narcissist does his job. We’ve even reached the second stage of backlash, where former Houses try to learn to be human beings; my favorite of these is Johnny Lee Miller’s Sherlock Holmes on “Elementary,” all gritted-teeth emotional honesty and terrible decisions, although I guess you could count Draper here as well.

These reactions were probably inevitable. What was definitely more evitable was that one of the most enjoyable recovering manchildren on television would be a depressed celebrity horse.

BoJack Horseman (voiced by Will Arnett) is a manfoal of the lowest order. He’s a sort of reverse centaur, with a human body and a horse’s head, in a cartoon world where many of the people are similarly half-owls or half-cats. BoJack was the star of a ’90s sitcom in the vein of “Full House,” but he hasn’t worked in decades. He’s all washed up, drowning his sorrows in enough vodka to kill a horse. Then into his life wanders Diane Nguyen (Alison Brie), who’s been assigned to ghostwrite his memoir. So begins a show filled with introspection, articulate despair, romance, adventure, and roller-skating owl women.

more (and if I’d given myself 200 more words they would all have been about Diane, whose season 2 arc is depressing, satisfying, terrific)


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